Taut storytelling, if sometimes a bit too high-strung.
A clutch of brusque, seriocomic and sometimes forbidding tales about lust, loss and betrayal by the Slovenian author (You Do Understand, 2010).
Each of the 15 brief stories in this collection tends to be restricted to two people involved in conflicts that are either familial or romantic. In “Electric Guitar,” a teenage boy lives in terror of his abusive father until his effort to electrify his accordion provides a serendipitous if mordant solution to his plight. In “Total Recall,” a woman ponders getting back at the man who rejected her by spreading a rumor that he has AIDS. And in “What We Talk About,” a man and woman conduct a brief and awkward flirtation away from their significant others, until the tryst turns violent. The general theme here is that people tend to be punished for pursuing their desires, an idea Blatnik can turn into fablelike comedy, as in “A Thin Red Line,” in which an explorer studying human sacrifice turns out to be an example of it. Or Blatnik can be harrowing and blunt with the theme, as in “No,” a two-page sketch that presages a rape. Blatnik is inventive at imagining a breadth of conceits that work within his narrow tonal range (darkly comic or just plain dark), though the more interior the story, the less successful it is: “Bastards Play Love Songs” is little more than two friends ruminating on the Rolling Stones and love gone wrong, and “When Marta’s Son Returned” is a thin sketch about a PTSD-stricken soldier’s return home. Contrary to the way the flash fiction of You Do Understand thrived on its exceedingly narrow constraints, these stories improve as they expand. The best of the batch, “Closer,” features a man struggling to explain his separation to his young son, and each distant phone call makes his isolation all the clearer.
Taut storytelling, if sometimes a bit too high-strung.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62897-042-5
Page Count: 130
Publisher: Dalkey Archive
Review Posted Online: June 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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